Page 63 of Base Block

So I thought that Anara shouldn’t have stood up and done her booming “De-mi-tri-ous!” thing when she saw her fiancé on the sideline, but there was really no stopping her. Some spectators wearing maroon glared at her but none of them flashed a weapon or swung, which I had seen before at the nightclubs I had gone to with Damian and the entourage.

“I wish you weren’t coming,” Callum had told me. It hadn’t been because he didn’t want to see me, although he wouldn’t actually be seeing me today at the field since Woodsmen families weren’t allowed on the field here. And I knew that he liked it when I was there because he knew how much I enjoyed watching them play. Anara and I had done fine when we’d gone to Iowa.

Today was different. We were close to the postseason, so everyone was in a higher gear, trying to make it. This was a much more hostile crowd, although most of the people seated directly around us were Woodsmen fans who had also made the drive down. They all smiled at Anara and one patted her back, which she allowed although I was aware that the only contact she really enjoyed was from Demitrious and from animals like Maverick.

He, by the way, was having a training weekend. The daycare place had recommended a sleep-away camp for behavioral issues, which he was still experiencing. With me. They kept telling me that he was so sweet and was never a problem when they had him, and I could see that when I watched him on the live cams. He listened, he didn’t jump, he didn’t bark. But the moment that I walked into the room, he went wild. I had a bruise on my butt from when he had recently knocked me right over. Again.

I hadn’t told Callum about that and he would never know, since he didn’t ever see my butt. He had no desire to look there.

The Woodsmen had gone into the visitors’ locker room after finishing their warmup, so there wasn’t anything for us to watch on the field and Anara settled down. She wanted to discuss her wedding for a while, and I was totally happy to do that. A week before, the two of us had gone down to Detroit to shop for a dress, making the quick flight one Sunday morning and coming back that night. She had found one that she really liked and I also thought it was beautiful. We’d had fun and hadn’t talked about my dog at all, although I had learned a lot about other animals.

Another thing we hadn’t touched on was sex, but I had some questions about it now. “Are you and Demitrious still doing it so often?” I asked her quietly.

“Are you talking about intercourse?”

“Yes, but you can’t talk so loud. Whisper,” I urged.

“We are doing it often, at least four times a week,” she told me in a voice so quiet that I could hardly hear. She gave me more details, too, and then asked, “Why do you want to know, or is this just girl-talk stuff?”

“No, it’s not just that.” I looked at the tunnel that the Woodsmen had used. “I was thinking about how much guys like to have sex.”

“It depends on the species, and it also depends on the particular man. Do you mean Callum?”

I did. “You know that he and I don’t do it,” I reminded her and she nodded. “I feel like he must want to with someone else, then.”

“Maybe not. Some men have extremely low libido,” she pointed out. “But looking at him, I wouldn’t think that’s true.”

“I wouldn’t think so either,” I agreed. “I don’t know what he’s doing at all hours of the day but I have a pretty good idea, and I don’t think there’s a lot of time for hooking up. He might be meeting women when he travels to these games, but…”

“I can ask Demitrious to watch him.”

“No, don’t do that,” I said immediately. “It’s none of my business.”

She turned to stare at me. “How? Why?”

“Because…because,” I said. “Because of what I told you and Heidi before about our lifestyle. Our set-up.”

“What you said to us before didn’t make any sense.” She recited it, probably almost word for word. “You live together because you needed a place to stay and he’s the best guy in the world, so he allowed you to go with him to Michigan. You also said that you care a lot about him.” She shook her head. “Those statements are illogical and told me almost nothing.”

“Ok, I’ll tell you more.” I kept my very, very low tone as I explained why I had ended up at Callum’s house in Indianapolis. First, I talked about leaving my own home in Washington, going to LA, struggling, and meeting Millie. “She saw me walking down the street and thought I’d be a good fit for her boss, Damian. The musician,” I reminded her. “He likes blondes, although he never cared for my eyes because he prefers blue and mine are so dark. There were two other women already there, but one left after a few months so it was just me and Sage. Millie wasn’t ever with him in the same way.”

“I have questions,” Anara stated, and I nodded. “First, explain how your type of polyamory worked.”

“You’re not whispering anymore,” I stated. “I wouldn’t have called it polyamory because we weren’t in an actual relationship with commitment or romance. We were paid, sometimes with money and sometimes with other stuff.”

“Like what?”

I had watched her mouth move and had read her lips, because now her whisper had no volume at all. “We got clothes,” I answered. “A place to stay. Drugs.”

I had thought that Anara would take all this well, and she did. “Plenty of animals live in harems, with many female members, one male, and their offspring. Mountain and plains zebras—not Grévy’s, though—and also several species of sea mammals, as well as elk and deer. It’s quite common and their relationships have nothing to do with romance. It isn’t unusual among humans, either.”

“It was unusual for me, at first,” I said. “But then I got used to it and it wasn’t so bad. I’ve dealt with a lot worse.”

“Like what?” she wanted to know, so I told her.

“Like, the family that adopted me. The dad was disgusting and he was all over us girls, and the mom let it happen. So really, Damian and Millie were easy in comparison. He got violent sometimes and he was small, but a slap is a slap. He used to kick, too, and one time, he took his cigarette—but it was ok,” I concluded. “It definitely wasn’t the worst.”

“Maybe not, but it sounds terrible,” she said. “I’m glad you left.”